Runebound (3rd Edition) Review

In one age, called the Third age by some, a wind rose near Neverwinter. It blew past a hole in the ground where there lived a hobbit, across Azeroth, and through Culhaven before finally settling in the city of Forge in the world of Terrinoth. It is here where your Runebound adventure begins; it’s a world that is at once intimately familiar yet foreign enough to want to explore in a game that is simple and intuitive yet deep enough to want to revisit time and time again.

Terrinoth is Fantasy Flight’s version of Middle Earth; a rich world that spans a number of titles and mechanics. Runebound, now in its third edition, is your portal to a sprawling fantasy adventure where you will roam the countryside slaying monsters, saving villages, and doing standard fantasy things in a mostly generic fantasy world with fantasy characters that dance just on this side of intellectual property infringement.

And I love it. Beginning your adventure in Terrinoth is effortless. You can focus on absorbing the mechanics and planning out which adventure gem you want to explore (and prevent your opponents from exploring) and not on trying to grok a theme that is different for the sake of being novel. Your elf will shoot arrows, the dwarf will smash things, and that old guy with the beard will be magical and mystical. Whereas in any other game I might consider this setting a negative, in Runebound it works really well. The lore never gets in the way of your actions and instead makes absorbing the story that you are crafting effortless.

Mechanically speaking, Runebound is made up of a series of rounds where each adventurer galivants across the countryside stopping to trade in cities or flip adventure gems, which signify a place where you can battle, quest, or have a social encounter of some kind. These adventures consist of decks of cards that are divided between encounters common to every game and encounters unique to the particular boss threatening the land. Margath, the evil Red Dragon brings with her wyrmlings that fill the countryside. The necromancer Vorakesh’s cards will litter Terrinoth with zombies for you to kill or companions for you to recruit. It’s a clever way of making each game feel different without introducing any new rules.

As you complete these adventures, you obtain trophies used to endow your hero with skills. These skills range from low-cost minor improvements to powerful abilities that transform you into the high-powered heroes whose names go down in legend. These skills are the primary way to grow your character, along with purchased items that can be equipped to add special powers or additional combat tokens. This growth is slow and steady; progress does not come in fits and bursts but in a slow burn that ensures that you never feel overpowered but can still look back two rounds and know that if only you’d had this skill or that sword when the Cutpurse ambushed you on the road to Dawnsmoor you’d have cut him down before he stole your money.

This brings me to combat, which is the one new and novel mechanic that Runebound brings to the table. Rather than roll dice, players will scoop up a handful of cardboard discs and cast them to the table like a shaman throwing knuckle-bones. These double-sided discs are emblazoned with symbols that do everything from deal damage to activate abilities unique to the monster or hero who is fighting, and combatants take turns lashing out or biding their time in a quick yet satisfying tactical mini-game of sorts.

In addition to providing tactical decisions, they also contribute to the sense of character grown. Adding a fourth, fifth, or sixth token to your arsenal is tactile evidence that you have gotten stronger. Looking across the four you’ve thrown down at the seven discs that Margath has flipped provides immediate visual feedback that you may be in over your head. They’re also just fun. Buying a sword feels more like buying a sword when you get a new object to throw down than it does when you get a new card to slip under your player sheet, and abilities that let you control when you flip yours over to the other side can provide for surprises and twists without dragging combat out.

And not dragging combat out is important. For all of it’s fun, Runebound has more in common with Return of the King than it does with Fellowship of the Ring. Heroes rarely interact while they’re off dealing with their own adventures. About the most you’ll ever be aware that you aren’t the only hero in the land is when Elder Mok flips the orange adventure gem you were headed for, causing you to change directions or simply wait a few rounds until it’s active again.

While you may agree to handle various communal threats in your little corner of Terrinoth, there is little interaction apart from a rare item swap or even rarer ability challenge. It’s a shame that Quest Adventures aren’t at least public, to add a race element to the game apart from the final race to kill the boss.While I expect future expansions to vary the interaction, this base experience suffers the dreaded curse of “multiplayer solitaire”. And while it may be one of the few blemishes, it’s the huge wart on the end of every witch’s green nose you’ve ever seen.

Despite this, Runebound provides a very enjoyable experience that I’ve already returned to more times than a certain other fantasy adventure game of mages and knights. It’s comfortable being comfortable, and I’m excited to see how future expansions build upon this foundation of adventure decks and combat tokens. Runebound breathes to life the mish-mashed fantasy world that has grown in my imagination since Dragonlance became The Lord of the Rings became The Wheel of Time on my nightstand, and for that I will pull it off the shelf again and again.